Bring back our anger

TOM BURGUMStaff Columnistburgum@lbknews.com

Five American service men died in a Chattanooga jihad last week. Like other outrages, it has sparked a response that includes makeshift memorials of flags, flowers, patriotic memorabilia accompanied by all the verbal bromides we have become so inured to since 9-11.

No doubt those who express their sadness by creating the memorials are sincere but the problem is sincerity itself isn’t much help with out something else to back it up. That something else is anger sufficient to stir people or a nation into action.

Columnist Mark Steyn was angry when he wrote: “Among the dead are men who waged a bloody and hard-fought battle to retake Tallulah . . . only to come home and die in a crappy shopping mall at the hand of a halfwit fanatic whose family had been under the leisurely money-no-object scrutiny of the bloated security apparatus for years.” Steyn is right and if the Chattanooga shooting doesn’t make you very angry, you have an adrenalin problem.

Events surrounding the recent nuclear agreement with Iran should raise temperatures a bit. If President Obama is correct, the agreement will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for 10 years, but virtually guarantees Iran will be come a regional power almost immediately and will be able to succeed in their nuclear ambitions in the 11th year. Maybe some missed the Iranian boast made during the recent negotiations in which the head of their special forces unit publicly bragged that Iran was responsible for at least 40 percent of American casualties in Iraq. While I understand why the Iranian military boasts of its prowess, I can’t quite understand our passivity in the face of Iranian “in-your-face” posturing.

Our public officials give no real answer to the Chattanooga shooting. President Obama once again called it an attack by a lone gunman. Our president means, no Islamic terrorism to be seen here. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter gave his version: “My thoughts and prayers – along with those of the men and women of the Department of Defense – are with the families of those killed in this senseless act of violence.” There you have it, the shootings had no meaning, it was nothing but a senseless act of violence.

Carter is joined in that nonsense by Hilary Clinton who typified the shooting in Chattanooga “senseless violence,” as did Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee along with a whole host of other congressional and local luminaries. Our own two senators, Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio, joined the chorus with, “We all mourn the senseless loss of life in Chattanooga . . . My thoughts and prayers today are with the victims of this senseless attack.”

What our leaders like to call “a senseless act of violence” by a “lone gunman” is not senseless at all to the jihadists doing the shooting. It was no more senseless to the Chattanooga shooter that it was to the 9-11 conspirators, or the Fort Hood shooter, or the shoe bomber, or the Manhattan car bomber, or the Boston Marathon bombers, or the Iranians that destroyed the Marine barracks in Lebanon, or the guys that blew a hole in the U.S.S. Cole, or the any number of other jihadists who think of themselves as holy warriors when they set out to kill Americans. They have a purpose and they are going to continue to succeed until we get angry enough to say we are tired of being targets and we’re going to do something about it.

Fact is, we aren’t angry now. People are saddened by violence that afflict fellow citizens, but that doesn’t last long. Remember the missing 276 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Boko Haram on April 14, 2014? Recall, if you can, Michelle Obama’s Hashtag, “bring back our girls?” Or the State Department spokesperson who posted her smiling picture with “bring back our girls?” Or Anne Hathaway’s grabbing a bull horn and taking to the streets of Los Angeles to raise awareness of the plight of the Nigerian young ladies.

Angelina Jolie one upped many in the bring-back-our-girls-empathy-competition when she told a Paris newspaper that, “The kidnapping of these young Nigerian girls is an unthinkable cruelty.” Then she added, “. . . of course, there is real evil in the world,” proving she is not just a pretty face.

The kidnapped girls had all the sympathy a temporarily concerned world could muster. It came from high places – the White House and the Department of State. Hollywood luminaries willing joined in. Commentators on MSNBC, CNN, and FOX gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands for over a week. Fat lot of good all that did the kidnapped girls. As of April 14, 2015, Amnesty International reported that of the original 276 girls that had been kidnapped, 219 are still missing. So, it appears that sympathy, even world-wide sympathy, just doesn’t get the job done.

Sympathy for the victims of the Chattanooga shooting, and their families is a natural reaction but, like all the other outrages committed against us, it will soon fade into the background and Chattanooga will become just another in a long list of Islamic attacks which may be occasionally referred to in some arcane political discussion, but will otherwise be’ forgotten. It is not enough.

It is no longer enough for the “Thank you for your service/We support our troops/We honor our heroes” bumper stickers and window signs. Time to channel General Sherman’s Civil War strategy in our dealing with ISIS, Boko Haram, and the others, and make conflict so terrible that it will be generations before jihadists appeal to violence again.

Enough of just mourning our dead in the war against radical Islam. It’s time to get good and angry.